Thursday, December 14, 2006

Why are 2.2 million Americans in jail?

The American traditionalist philosopher Jim Kalb is back posting regularly after taking some time away from his website to prepare a book.

I was particularly struck by two of his recent posts on the issue of crime. They are well worth reading:

From the Great Society to the Big House

The soul of man under liberalism

I was also interested to read in one of the articles Jim Kalb links to that in the UK the average rate of homicide with a firearm in the years 1890-92 was only 1 per year (when the UK had a population of 30 million). It seems to me that this is a kind of civilisational achievement which has been lost along the way.

2 comments:

  1. Yes crime and deviance in America is an intriguing thing. I make no official claims about it other than that.

    I watched a recent documentary about what happened in the Sth, in the days prior to Hurricane Katrina. The law went around and locked up a lot of stray peole. And they were caught in the cells without sustinance and services. And some are still there now, and cant get out because all records were destroyed.

    Here is a link which gives a more graphic acount of how crime stats matter

    http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/30/news/notes.php

    ReplyDelete
  2. Try this instead:

    www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/30/
    news/notes.php

    ReplyDelete